


Coming Home

by pissedoffeskimo



Series: All We Have [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1995687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pissedoffeskimo/pseuds/pissedoffeskimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had said ‘find a home.’ He’d said to find somewhere Dean ‘belonged.’ The Roadhouse was the closest he’d ever come to that and it was gone.  Just like Sam.  (Set between Seasons 5 and 6.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Set After Safety Net; I'm extremely anxious about posting this, because it is heavily reliant on an original character, however, I reference it later, so here it is. Rest assured, the wincest will be back in full swing on the next post.

When Dean had pulled up to what was left of the Roadhouse, the sun was just peaking up over the top of the distant trees. When he had to pee, he went behind the weapon’s shed, which was remarkably unharmed considering the fire that had consumed the rest of the property some three years ago, and when he got hungry, he reminded himself of why he was sitting there alone and the urge fled with a sigh.

Sam had said ‘find a home.’ He’d said to find somewhere Dean ‘belonged.’ The Roadhouse was the closest he’d ever come to that and it was gone.

Just like Sam.

The Roadhouse wasn’t on a well traveled road, it wasn’t supposed to be. It had been put there for Hunters. The residents of the nearby town liked it, too. The only tourists it saw where the ones that were lost, so when a car pulled up next to his, he figured he’d recognize who it was. It took him a moment, but he did.

It was Amon Griggs, chairman of the school board – the one legged ex-hunter that had put up with Dean’s shit, because Ellen asked him to. Dean managed half a smile as the man walked up, stopping just outside of his personal space. They hadn’t spent a whole lot of time together outside of the few occasions Amon had to smooth over something Dean’d done at school, but it had been enough for him to know the unwritten rules of handling the Winchester boys. Don’t get too close unless they let you and Amon always had been a smart man.

“Dean Winchester, what brings you out here?”

“Me?” Dean shrugged, turning back to the wreckage of his kind-of home, because it was better than thinking about the wreckage of his life. “Just passing through.”

“Is that so?”

“What about you? Who turned me in?”

Who’d seen him on the side of the road and called the only adult left in town Dean had even a moderate amount of respect for?

“May Wilburn, you remember her?”

He smiled faintly. Yeah, he did. Sam had told him about the rumors he spread about her and why he’d spread them and, honestly, Dean couldn’t have been prouder. The lesbian was freakin’ genius.

Amon nodded, “Well, she remembers you. She saw you out here earlier this morning on her way to work and you were still here on her way back home, so she called it in.”

Like him and Sam being in town required a warning system. He thought about everything that had happened since they’d been dropped off so many years ago. Okay, maybe a warning system wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

“Good for her. I won’t be long. Just… taking a moment.”

Slowly, Amon moved forward and sat next to Dean, not looking at him, but at the Roadhouse as well, the blackened beams almost darker against the bright colors of the sun setting.

“I’m sorry about Sam.” Of course, he knew. They probably all did. Not that Dean was advertising, but Hunters knew how to spread a rumor and he might have been two weeks with his head in Bobby’s occult books before he headed out here, but he’d heard the muffled phone calls the man and taken and made. He’d heard him answering questions about the apocalypse and about Sam. So, yeah, they probably all knew by now, didn’t mean Dean was talking about it.

They sat silent for a while and Dean was just starting to get comfortable when Amon spoke again. “So, what are you going to do now?”

With a sarcastic laugh, Dean ran his hands through his hair and tried not to think about how they came back greasy because he needed a shower, which reminded him it had been too many days since he’d changed his clothes.

“I have… absolutely no idea. Sam wanted me…” He had to take a deep breath to continue, because he wasn’t going to cry, he wasn’t going to let his voice shake, he wasn’t breaking down, not in front of Griggs. Not in front of anyone. “He wanted me to find somewhere to…” he couldn’t bring himself to say the word home out loud. Finally, he rubbed the back of his neck, squeezed tight and dropped his hand back down before he managed to get out, “to settle down. I’m not even sure that place exists.”

God, it was like a minefield going off in his chest. Every other word he forced out make him feel tight and uncomfortable in his own skin.

After another long moment, Amon reached back, pulling something out of his pocket and handing it over to Dean. It was a bundle of papers and when Dean opened it, he saw ‘Harvelle’s Roadhouse’ at the top.

“I don’t know if Ellen ever told you, Dean, but The Roadhouse was insured. So was she actually, the way her husband died, I think she was afraid Jo would be left with nothing if something ever happened. Back when this place first burned down, she filed all the papers to have the insurance do the rebuild. Plans were drawn up, approved, it was all ready to go, except Jo refused to come back, so she put the project on hold and went after her daughter.”

“You should also know, that you and Sam were in her will, right alongside Jo. If anything happened to her, she expected you to take care of everything.”

Dean stared from the paper that might as well have been written in Germanic, because he couldn’t focus a thought long enough to read it, back to the Roadhouse, then over at Amon, who wasn’t smiling, or looking smug, just watching back and waiting.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it’s yours. The whole thing. The insurance was already collected – when she didn’t do the rebuild, she had the payout put in an account, just in case she convinced Jo to come home. If you want, you can rebuild it, or you can take the money and start new somewhere else.”

Where? Where would he start over?

“You think about it, come see me in the morning.”

Dean listened to him leave and stared at the paper some more. Rebuild the Roadhouse. It really wasn’t a half bad idea. Actually, it felt like it could, just maybe, be home. If he tried hard enough.

 

*****

 

It took three months for the rebuild. Three months and two weeks, actually, because Dean insisted on going through every inch of rubble himself, salvaging anything and everything he could. Mostly it was horseshoes, guns that were meant to look decorative, but were loaded with rocksalt and silver bullets, the ice cooler under the bar was in pretty good shape, and he found a slightly blackened PBR under what was left of the pool table. Everything he managed to salvage fit into the shed, which had, not surprisingly, been empty when he opened it.

While the workers messed with the pipes and foundation, Dean started on what was left of the little house out back. It had burned with the Roadhouse, but not as badly. Probably because there wasn’t as much alcohol to fuel the flames.

The metal bed frame Ellen had bought him and Sam was soot covered, but not warped. Some picture frames on the walls had survived, if not the pictures themselves. He even found the set of small tin soldiers William had given to Jo before he died. After it was done, he told them not to rebuild the house. It was just him and he wasn’t going to be able to sleep in there, not without Sam.

Once they started in on the building itself, Dean put a hand in, helping where he could.   He wasn’t much of a builder, but he was a quick learner and it was something to do to pass the time.

At night, he had a room at the local pay-by-the-week motel that reminded him of the one he and Sam had stayed in when he was fifteen. It had the same layout, the same scratchy sheets, it might have even had the same tacky wallpaper, or maybe not.   He hadn’t thought he’d ever forget a moment of what happened back then, but as the years had stretched out, other memories – some bad, some good – had crept in and now… now that pain seemed more distant. Not gone completely, that really was never going to happen, but eclipsed by bigger ones, worse ones, ones where Sammy wasn’t even there anymore.

Most nights, though, he slept in the Impala and used the shower at the motel when he needed to. At least having hot water in the morning was nice and there was electricity and free internet when he needed to use the computer.

Two months in, Abel showed up. Dean hadn’t recognized him at first, it had been so long. The last time he’d seen Abel was just before Sam left for Stanford. He’d been gone on a hunt and he’d gotten home to find Abel there, dropping off a message for Ellen from his parents. When Dean had asked why they hadn’t just called, he’d shrugged and said it was too important, couldn’t risk someone overhearing, but the way he wouldn’t meet Dean’s eyes while he talked and the way he bailed the next morning said there was more to it.

He’d half suspected it had something to do with Jo, maybe, but then Abel never came back, so Dean dropped it – more important things to do and monsters to hunt. One errand boy making eyes at his ex-girlfriend, kind-of-sort-of sister wasn’t really worth the time and effort.

Now, though, he was all grown up. He’d been near Dean’s height when they were younger, but apparently hadn’t grown much more, while Dean had put on another few inches. It put them maybe five inches apart, if Dean had to guess, and while he hadn’t lost any of his muscle definition, he had definitely taken after Mizuki in his smaller frame.

He’d pulled up and Dean had taken that moment to root through his directory of people before coming up with a name. “Abel! What are you doing here?!”

A lot of Hunters had come by over the past few months and Dean had gotten good at putting on a strained smile and working his way through awkward, painful conversations until they left. Just like when John died, only Dean tried not to think about how many _weren’t_ there. The numbers were at least cut in half, he knew that logically, had known since they started getting picked off during the whole apocalypse thing.

The thing Sam had killed himself to stop.

If Abel noticed the waver in Dean’s smile, he didn’t say anything. Abel was always an okay guy. “I heard a rumor some idiot decided to rebuild the Roadhouse. Had to check that out for myself.”

Dean wiped his blistered hands on his jeans and held one out. The moment Abel had his hand, he let the next bomb slip. “I also heard you weren’t doing so well.”

The smile slipped again, but he didn’t bother to put it back on, because what was the point? “Yeah, well.”

That was all he was saying to that and Abel seemed to take it in stride. He leaned against a tree while Dean moved lumber from the pile the drop-off crew had left over to the pile by the workers to get his thoughts together and after a few trips, finally managed to get something out.

“So, who was it? Bobby?.”

“No.”

“Who?”

Abel shrugged, “I heard about Sam from someone passing through the church. I figured the rest out on my own.”

Dean frowned and grabbed some more wood. “I don’t need your pity, okay? You can go pedal that shit somewhere else.”

Abel didn’t respond, just waited and watched while Dean took another two trips back and forth. After the third, Dean sighed. “If you plan on sticking around, you might as well make yourself useful.”

 

*****

 

He did and he kept helping. Dean gave him the key to the room he had in town. He hardly went there, anyway, and it had two beds, just in case he decided to throw himself a pity party and sit in the room, wallowing in his own self misery for a while.

As they rounded the last few weeks, Abel was still there, still helping, although, he’d started taking cheap shots at Dean. It started simple enough. One morning, Dean had driven in for a shower after not sleeping in the car at the construction sight, because he’d had a nightmare early in the evening.

Abel woke, blinked a few times and grinned, “Hey, Princess.”

He stopped, stared at him for a few moments, and then continued on into the bathroom, shucking his clothes the minute the door was closed. It had been months since anyone ribbed him about anything. Everyone was so goddamned careful around him and calling him Princess wasn’t the worst Abel or anyone had ever said to him by far, but it just felt too… normal.

Dean wasn’t ready to feel normal.

Apparently, though, what he was or wasn’t ready for didn’t really matter, because having someone there constantly poking and prodding at him was about as normal as it got for Dean and even if it was Abel and not Sam – _don’t think about_ _Sam_ – it was still status quo.

 

*****

 

It was the last week before the completion that Dean finally broke down. He’d been up all night staring at the catalogue with the little yellow tabs pressed on pages. Sinks. They wanted him to pick a sink for the kitchen and bathrooms, because the ones Ellen had picked previously were out of commission so it was up to Dean.

He didn’t know anything about sinks. Sam knew sinks. Sam was always elbow deep in the rusted basin that had been there before. He’d almost always been on kitchen duty – helping but not cooking, because before Jess, Sam couldn’t cook a Pop-tart (and there was a scorched microwave out there somewhere from where Sam shoved one in, wrapper and all and hit five minutes, thinking he’d surprise Dean by making them breakfast).

Sam knew sinks, Dean didn’t, but Sam wasn’t there and Dean was staring at a catalogue, because he’d done the round of calls the day before and it had been a month since anyone turned up any kind of lead on how to open the cage. Maybe a month wasn’t that long, but it was long enough. He’d been searching for nearly three months now and if no one had found anything – if _he_ hadn’t found anything – there wasn’t anything to find and he was picking out sinks.

It didn’t occur to him how much time had passed until Abel came in with donuts and coffee and stopped in the doorway. “Hey, you been here all night?”

Dean looked up and saw the faint light coming from the windows that said it was dawn. Last time he’d checked it had been three.

“Yeah, I, uh… I have to pick a sink.”

Whether Abel understood or not, he still said, “Okay,” and sat down next to him at the fold out table Dean had set up. “What are you thinking?”

Dean pushed the magazine over and bent his head down, pressing his elbows hard into the plastic top of the table and combing fingers through his hair, gripping it tight enough to pull a few strands out.

“Dean…”

“You know what? Why? Why did he do it? Why did he have to throw himself in that fucking cage and leave me behind? I sold my fucking soul to Lillith on a dime to keep that from happening again and he just…”

God, he’d gone to hell to keep Sam alive, and maybe it had been selfish, but he had never regretted it, not even when he finally caved and got off the rack, because all that torture was nothing compared to this empty hole in the pit of his chest that just felt like it was getting bigger every day.

Abel blinked, but decided the safest thing to do was answer, “To save the world?”

“No, because we could have done that some other way.” Before Abel could protest, Dean looked up, slammed his hands down on the table and threw them forward, sending the table and its contents crashing to the ground. “We could have _tried_. But, no, he had to say yes and throw himself in some damn pit and leave me behind and now I’m picking out fucking sinks and I don’t… I don’t know how to do this.”

Abel didn’t move and Dean sat down heavily and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, trying to think through the haze of exactly how wrong it was that he was here, doing this instead of out Hunting with his brother. After what felt like forever, Abel stood up and Dean suddenly didn’t want to be alone. He caught Abel’s wrist, but didn’t look up, because he didn’t know what to say and he didn’t want to see sympathy or pity or anything. He wanted to see Sam, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Abel pulled his wrist away and Dean kept his eyes on the floor, because if Abel was going to walk away and leave him in peace to get his head straight that was fine, but he didn’t have to watch him walk out the door.

Instead, Abel sat back down, scooted closer and wrapped his arms awkwardly around Dean. Or it should have been awkward. He hadn’t hugged a great many people and not a single one since Sam died. He hadn’t wanted to touch anyone really, even handshakes were a stretch, but Abel wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders and Dean closed his eyes, sitting stiffly for just a minute before he melted into it. Not hugging back, but he put his head on Abel’s shoulder and he let himself cry for the first time in more than three months.

 

*****

 

The rebuild finished. Ellen had intended for it to be as close to the same as she legally could, but it still felt too clean and too polished, even after they dragged all the stuff Dean had salvaged out of the shed and hung it up, exactly where it had been before. Even then it was missing something.

Dean tried to figure it out. Part of it was smell. Part of it was how empty it was. Part of it was the things he hadn’t been able to save that should have cluttered up the place. New ashtrays, new tables, new chairs, new glasses, everything too new.

So, he decided to christen the place. He grabbed Abel out of the motel, because he didn’t want to do it alone, picked up a twelve pack of PBR, then sat on the brand new, green velvet topped pool table, motioning for Abel to join him.

Cautiously, Abel pushed himself up, crossed his legs and accepted the beer with the same enthusiasm one might accept a hand shake from a demon.

“So, what are we doing here at one in the morning?”

Dean popped the tab and took a long chug. “We’re christening the Roadhouse.”

“Okay.” He opened his own can and took a slow, small sip. “How exactly does drinking beer on a pool table christen the Roadhouse?”

“Ash.” Dean grinned, “Ash used to get drunk and black out on the pool table after Ellen had gone to bed and his drink of choice?”

“PBR?”

“Got it in one!”

“Okay.” His eyes said he didn’t trust Dean’s sanity and his next words confirmed it. “Are we going to piss on it, too, because I seem to remember that happening once or twice.”

“That he did.” Abel waited anxiously for his answer and Dean made him wait while he drank his beer half down. “But, no. I don’t want to clean that up. Unless, you do, in which case…”

“No, no, that’s fine.”

For the first time in a long while, Dean started to relax. There was a warm buzz in his body, a beer in his hand, he was sitting in a kind-of-familiar place and it was all too new and too strange to really wrap his head around, but it was better than sitting in his car alone, staring at memories that weren’t there.

Three beers for Dean and still the first one for Abel, who suddenly had a brilliant idea. “Didn’t there used to be a bullet whole over there, by the door?”

“Yeah!” He used to stare at it for hours, wondering how it happened. He’d wondered if someone had pissed Ellen off enough to make her fire a gun in her own bar, or if someone had been stupid enough to take a shot at someone else in her bar.

Abel got up off the pool table and took the gun off the wall. All of them were locked and loaded, once again as much protection as they were decoration and Dean took it, feeling the weight of it in his hand. It was the first time he’d held a gun in months.

Getting back up, Abel forced down the last of his first beer. “You want to do the honors, or should I?”

Dean aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. It was practiced, familiar, normal and he watched the little whole open in the wall next to the door and smiled. Abel clapped him on the back and he remembered a time when he would have jumped at that. He remembered how any hands other than Sam’s had set him off and how afterwards, even when he didn’t jump at the sudden contact, he wasn’t comfortable with it.

This was comfortable and it made his gut twist painfully at the same time it made him feel a little warmer inside.

“Welcome home, Dean.”

 

*****

 

Abel drove back to his parents’ church long enough to get their trailer and bring it back, parking it outside the Roadhouse a little too close to where Ash use to keep his. Dean tried to protest, but it was weak at best and Abel was right, if he was going to be staying there, he couldn’t keep paying for a rent-by-the-week room.

For his part, Dean put a moderately comfortable cot in the office and kept his clothes strewn in various piles of clean, mostly clean kinda dirty, mostly dirty, and needs to be bleached.

The first day they were open was kind of disastrous. The second wasn’t much better. Then Dean let Abel work the kitchen and it got better. At least, there weren’t as many complaints about the food, but Abel pointed out that Dean would need to hire a cook.

So, Dean went out and found an over eager twenty-two year old Frances, who was really desperate to get out of his parents’ basement and could grill a burger without burning anything down or poisoning the customers. By the end of the third week, things were going okay. They weren’t raking in the dough, but Dean had already gotten in touch with contacts about getting something in the weapon’s shed, because he remembered Ellen saying that was how she squeezed by sometimes and he was probably going to need that.

By the end of the month, as Dean wiped down the bar at the end of the day and Abel put chairs on the tables, he watched him, wondering.

“Hey.” Abel looked at him and he bit the inside of his mouth for a second, suddenly worried he didn’t want the answer, but what the hell. “Why are you still here?”

“You never asked me to leave.” Abel smiled at him, timid, thin lipped and as different from Sam as Dean had ever seen, but still… not bad. Kind of nice. Kind of really nice. And damn if Abel wasn’t right. He hadn’t. Not once. It had never even occurred to him.

They finished up and sat on the bar next to each other, Abel nursing a soda, Dean drinking a bear. He looked at Abel’s hands on the can and they were slender and kind of small compared to the hands he was more familiar with. Abel wasn’t a father figure, not a kid sister, or a mother, certainly not a brother, but he was a friend. Maybe even one he could trust in some of the ways he’d trusted Sam, maybe with some of his darker secrets when he needed it, because eventually, he would.

He rocked to the side, nudging Abel’s shoulder with his and expected a gentle nudge in return. Instead, he found himself shoved off the bar, beer spilling on the floor and Abel looking down at him, laughing.

“Son of a bitch!”

Abel kept right on laughing.

A friend, yeah, but a friend that was gonna get his ass kicked.

 

*****

 

He woke up from a dream about Sam and the Impala and the things they used to do in the car to a knock on the office door. He rolled half over, hand sliding off the cot to curl around the gun he kept under it, but not coming up, because it wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept late.

“Who’s it?”

“Who do you think it is, sleeping beauty?”

Abel. Taking his hand off the gun, he sat up, stretching and planted his feet firmly on the cold wood floor. “What time’s it?”

“Seven.”

“In the morning?!” Dean fished around the floor for his jeans and tugged his phone out, looking at the time incredulously. “Dude, what the hell?!”

It was fucking Sunday, they didn’t open until five. He yanked the door open, not sure if he was going to yell some more or just punch Abel in the face, except the stunned expression stopped him from doing either. He stammered for a minute before he finally got out. “Seven in the fucking morning? Why the hell am I up at seven in the morning? Why the hell are _you_ up at seven in the morning?”

Abel opened and closed his mouth a few times and it took Dean a moment, but he realized Abel was actually blushing. “No… just, sorry. I thought… It’s been six months, today, since Sam, you know. I thought you might want to go out and, I don’t know, spar? Drink early enough so you’ll be mostly sober before we open? …maybe?”

Six months. It had been six months and he hadn’t even noticed. He should have noticed that.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay.” Abel started to turn and stopped, giving Dean a half smile. “Nice legs, by the way, and, uh, not bad.”

Dean looked down and flushed bright red, shutting the door in Abel’s goddamn chuckling face. He’d forgotten to put his pants on and he was still sporting goddamn morning wood from that dream and the need to pee and wearing only his boxer briefs. He should start sleeping in pants. When he’d been younger, he had.

Hell, when he was on the road with Sam, he’d slept in his jeans and hadn’t lost that habit until sometime after Sam left for college. Even then he’d worn some kind of clothing, because there was something about being that exposed that didn’t settle right with him. Then Sam…

…he deflated against the door and breathed deep. Six months. Six months without Sam’s hands on him, Sam’s breath in his ear, Sam’s smell invading his space, Sam’s heat warming him up just because they were that close.

He needed to hit something. No, he needed to shoot something.

He pulled on yesterday’s pants, grabbed his gun and didn’t bother changing his t-shirt from the one he’d slept in. On the way to the back, he pulled the duffle out from under the bar and tossed it at Abel’s feet. “Come on, I need some target practice.”

Fifteen minutes and a slew of broken beer bottles later, Dean began to feel the angry tension bleed out of him. He got off one more shot and the already broken half of the Miller Light bottle leapt off the rock it had been set it on and clattered to the ground with the rest of them.

Abel hadn’t done any shooting, even if the gun was in his hand, loaded and ready to go.

They’d gone out to where the old house used to be. Dean had agreed to let them remove the rubble, but the old poured concrete foundation had stayed. He’d set some larger rocks up and saved bottles and cans from the bar to use as target practice. There was a large bin full of them by the weapon’s shed and Dean thought about going back for more, but honestly? This wasn’t making him feel better. Less tense, maybe, but certainly not better.

As he sat next to Abel on one of the metal chairs he’d salvaged and refused to give up entirely, no matter that they occasionally folded on whoever was sitting in them. Abel wasn’t looking at him and Dean thought about that morning, about what Abel had said. Not just the way he’d said it, either, but the way he’d looked when he said it. Dean had seen looks kind of like that. He’d seen it on dirty men in bars that liked pretty boys and he’d seen it on his brother countless times. It was a look that said he liked what he was seeing and somehow that didn’t bother Dean as much as he thought it should, or maybe just that everything else eclipsed it, but either way, he wanted it in the open. He needed it to be in the open.

“Hey, man, are you gay?”

“What?!” Abel was looking now, deep brown eyes wide and a pale flush to his cheeks.

Dean raised his eyebrows, waited and finally, Abel caved, but didn’t look away. “Yeah. Okay, yeah, I am, but that isn’t why I came, Dean, and it’s not why I’m still here.”

“Then why did you come?”

Abel shrugged, “I don’t know. When I heard about Sam, I just… it seemed like the right thing to do. Like that’s what Sam would have wanted me to do.”

His shoulder’s sagged, “He did everything for you, man, everything. We’d lay around and talk for hours and all he could ever talk about was you. Then he said he was going to Stanford and he told me why. He ever tell you why?”

Dean nodded, trying not to think too hard about sitting in that cage, listening to Sam talk and how he’d thought they might actually die and it would be fucking vampires, of all things.

“Yeah, well, he told me and I wanted to be pissed, but I think I already saw it coming on some level. Sam wasn’t going to stay at the Roadhouse. There wasn’t anything he could do for you there and I knew that. So, when I heard Sam was dead, the first thing I thought about was you and when I got the rumors that you were here, I came.”

He didn’t remember Abel and Sam being that close back then, but Abel said that he had talked to Sam for hours, and they were apparently close enough that Sam leaving for college should have upset Abel, and somehow Abel thought Sam would have wanted him to check on Dean, and for some reason they had kept that friendship hidden from Dean.

At some point during that, his attention had turned to the dirt just to the left of his right shoe, but now Dean caught Abel’s eyes again, because he wanted to see his reaction, he had to be sure. “You slept with Sam, didn’t you?”

The look said it all. The bright red of Abel’s cheeks, the slack jawed gape and the way his eyes widened in something close to fear. “Oh, god, um…” because that was harder than just telling Dean he was gay. Gay was okay. Slept with Sammy might get him killed. Finally, he half shrugged like he wanted to play it off and managed a hesitant. “Yes?”

When Dean didn’t respond or move, Abel rushed forward with words, because he knew, push come to shove, fist to face, Dean would win that fight and Abel would let him. “Not that we took it very far. He was seventeen and it was hand jobs mostly, some dry humping, but that was it.   And Sam started it.”

Finally, Dean nodded, more to himself than Abel, because he was remembering something Jo had said once, a really long time ago when he’d had a whole family and other things to worry about.

“Who else?”

“Who… what do you mean?”

“What happens with Sam Winchester, stays with Sam Winchester.”

Abel paled considerably, but didn’t brush him off or try to burry it under excuses like Dean was afraid he would. He wanted to know, he needed to know, because it kind of felt like he hadn’t known his brother as well as he thought he had, or maybe at all.

“Well, there were two girls at his high school that I know of, Brad – the kid that tailed around after Greg for a while – and, um, wait, uh, I think his name was… Cory – fresh faced kid from New York, with no manners. No idea what Sam saw in him. There were also a few guys at his college, a few girls, too, before he found Jess. Me and… Kay.”

“Kay?!” He knew all about Kay now. He hadn’t when he was younger, because Ellen thought it would be better if he didn’t, but he did now. “How old was he?”

“Sixteen, I think?” Dean took a moment to resent that Kay was already dead, because if she hadn’t been, he would have hunted her down himself.

“That’s it?”

Abel nodded and they sat silently for a long time. That wasn’t bad. Not as bad as Dean had been afraid of. From what Jo said, Dean was kind of afraid, just for a moment there, that Sam had been sleeping with every Hunter that walked in the door. Like maybe he’d been trying to prove to himself that sex was okay by having it with a lot of people and the idea that Dean had done that to Sam was fucking terrifying.

Still, there were the other things Abel had said. Hand jobs and dry humping. That was it. Nothing more and at seventeen, a normal boy would have been all over that. So, he hadn’t gone undamaged, but it could have been worse. Could have been a lot worse. In fact, Dean had thought it was worse. He’d thought he’d fucked Sammy up so bad that the only people he’d ever even considered having sex with was one pretty girl in college and Dean, his own brother.

“So, just hand jobs and heavy petting, huh?” Abel nodded, unable to meet Dean’s gaze, not even trying. “He ever tell you why?”

Because he felt like he owed Abel something. He’d told Dean something about Sam he hadn’t known and it was something important for so many reasons Dean wasn’t sure he could put into words.

Abel shook his head, clearly hesitant, clearly uncomfortable, but moving forward with it anyway. “No. I asked a few times, but he got really quiet after and wouldn’t tell me anyway, so I dropped it.”

It took a while for Dean to say it. It took nearly ten whole minutes sitting in a chair that could fall out from under him at any minute to not just get the words together in his head, but to say them out loud. He’d said it to Ellen and Jo. He’d said it to John. He’d never been able to bring himself to tell Bobby, who by all accounts, probably had a right to know exactly what he’d saved them from that day.

Still, Abel was here and Abel was waiting and finally, Dean managed to get it out. No details, although, it probably wasn’t hard to imagine there had been a rape in there somewhere, that some people probably liked it rough, that he might have been beaten up or more at some point along the way. He stuck to the facts and he got it out as quickly as he could while still explaining what he’d done, what Sam hadn’t done and why they’d come back into the life.

It hadn’t hurt saying it as much as it had the last times. In fact, he was quite pleasantly numb over the whole thing. For one short, relatively brief period in his life, he’d sucked cock for money. He’d bent over and let someone fuck his ass for a surprisingly small amount of it, considering what he was giving. He’d done a whole hell of a lot of things he wasn’t proud of, but he’d done more since then. He’d lost Sam twice because he couldn’t save him. He’d died himself, gone to hell, and tortured countless souls because he was too far gone from being tortured himself. He’d done worse and had worse done to him. Bending over the hood of the Impala for a drunken trucker on an empty road didn’t seem nearly so bad, anymore. Besides, at least that had kept Sammy alive.

Abel took it all in, started to say something, stopped, and finally went with. “Well, that explains a lot.”

Dean glared at him and wordlessly kicked the junction at the bottom of the chair that he knew would make it collapse under Abel and watched with a decent amount of satisfaction as Abel fell ass first on the ground with a thud and a, “Jerk!”

He opened his mouth to say ‘bitch’ in an automatic response, but stopped short as, for one moment, Abel looked like Sam. He didn’t, not at all, but in that moment, sitting in the old busted chairs with broken beer bottles littering the ground in front of them, a gun heavy in Dean’s lap and Abel calling him “Jerk!” just like Sam did – _had_ – all the damn time, in that moment it could have been Sam and Dean. He managed to hide his grimace under a laugh.

 

*****

 

Either Abel was getting tail on the side – and Dean somehow doubted that, because the only time they were apart was when they slept – or he was the most patient man Dean had ever met in his entire life. Possibly more patient than even Sam and that put him right up there with a saint, because Dean had figured out what he was doing.

Dean was pretty sure Abel liked him. Why would he still be hanging around otherwise? He knew Abel thought he was hot – he’d caught him staring often enough. What Abel couldn’t understand was that Dean couldn’t go there. He had with Sam, because it was Sam and he could do anything with his brother.

Abel was something else, he was some _one_ else and that wasn’t going to work, but Dean couldn’t bring himself to tell him about his relationship with Sam. So, the thing sat between them, a giant fucking elephant in the room that neither of them wanted to acknowledge and Dean thought about throwing him out a lot, but couldn’t do that either. He liked having Abel there. He liked having a constant, because as much as Dean might say otherwise, he didn’t do well alone.

Of course, that didn’t mean he had to make things comfortable for Abel, either. He liked to push a little, half hoping Abel would make a move and he could shoot him down and have it in the open and over with. So, occasionally, he stumbled around in the morning shirtless, although he hadn’t forgotten his pants again, and when they decided to get drunk – okay, when Dean decided to get drunk, because Abel didn’t drink alcohol often and never to excess – he pushed in a little too close and invaded the other man’s personal space just a little, just enough to make him blush and shift so their knees stopped touching.

It was kind of fun, actually, revenge for the many names Abel slung at him on a constant basis. Princess. Sleeping Beauty. Pretty boy. Fabio.

It was funny to watch the various shades of red he could turn Abel, which was also revenge for the times he used to do that to Dean when they were younger.

It was a release from the tension of the day, the stumbling of words over those thin lips that made Dean smile a little, because he’d done that, he’d taken Abel’s words away with his hand on a knee after hours, with a wink and an easy grin that used to get him girls’ numbers by the dozen.

It was also really fucked up when Abel took the bait one night and kissed him.

Dean didn’t see that one coming. It completely blindsided him. One minute, he was nudging Abel with his shoulder, their knees just touching, saying something he couldn’t even remember and the next Abel just turned his head and brushed his lips to Dean’s. Just a second, just a peck, but honest and definitely not a mistake. Not with the way his eyes closed just before their lips touched. Not with how he went from that funny shade of red to a sickly white.

“Oh, god, I didn’t…” Abel was as hesitant in the way he kissed as he was in the way he talked when he was being honest. Sam was always so sure of himself with Dean. Sam pressed himself into Dean’s space with hungry need and insisted on talking about everything.

The way Abel’s lips barely touched his before he pulled away, the way he instantly looked like he was going to be sick, was so different from anything that had ever happened between Sam and Dean that it felt… not as bad as it should have. Not as bad as he would have expected it to, if he’d seen it coming.

He didn’t have a chance to react before Abel was scrambling off the pool table, mumbling apologies as he raced through the back door and probably into his trailer. A slam of metal on metal confirmed that suspicion.

Dean didn’t move for a very long time. He tried to think it through, get his head around it, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t honestly say he wasn’t gay anymore than he could say he was straight. He’d had sex with men for money and he hadn’t like that. He’d had sex with girls and it had felt okay, but he was still dealing with too much to put real effort into it. Not even with Jo and he’d really wanted to try with her. Then he’d had sex with Sam and he’d stopped everything else. So, he wasn’t so much gay or straight or bi as he was into Sam. Or at least, he’d thought that was it.

Except the press of Abel’s lips hadn’t been that bad. The feel of Abel’s leg touching his hadn’t been bad, either. Having Abel there every day hadn’t been bad and he didn’t think that was just because he didn’t want to be alone, or if it was, it didn’t matter.

Getting up, he winced at his half asleep legs and took a moment to walk some feeling back into them as he made his way to the trailer. The first knock went unanswered. The second was followed by. “Go away, Dean!”

“It’s Santa, open up.”

Abel did open, but he looked pissed. It was the first time Dean had seen him angry. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving, okay? I just… I’m gonna take the night and then I’ll go.”

He started to shut the door, but Dean caught it. “How about you let me get a word in before you decide what I want?”

Abel stopped seething and looked at Dean with dark eyebrows drawn in confusion.

“Look, I’m not gonna pretend I’m not freaking out a little, okay, but I don’t want you to leave.”

“You don’t?” He didn’t sound even remotely convinced. “I’m not an idiot, Dean, you’re not gay. The only people I’ve ever seen you with are women and what you told me about when you were kids, I just… and I tried not to like you, I really did, because that is not what this is about, but I can’t help myself. You’re… you. And you’re ridiculously hot.”

He deflated against the door, looking very much like a kicked puppy and it hurt a little, because that reminded Dean of Sam, but it was also a little funny.

“Ridiculously hot?”

He blushed violently, but stared Dean down. “You know it’s true. Enough girls have thrown themselves at you that you know it’s true.”

And that was okay. This was all surprisingly, strangely, wrongly okay. Enough that it made Dean a little queasy. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“If I stay…” Abel bit his lip, “If I stay, I’m going to kiss you again. Not… that’s not a threat or anything, it’s just that… I don’t think I’ll be able to help myself.”

Dean shrugged, “Okay.”

Abel stood up from the door, stiff and his arms dropped from where they were crossed defiantly against his chest. “You what?”

Dean stepped up onto the landing of the trailer and looked down at Abel. It was different looking down at someone he was about to kiss, because with Sam he had always been looking up. “I said, okay. I can’t promise that it’s gonna to work. I won’t promise anything, but I think,” he gulped down the lump in his throat, “I think I want to try.”

Abel stared up at him for a long few minutes, taking in what Dean had said, or maybe trying to read his face, it was hard to say, because he looked so confused and hopeful and Dean couldn’t bring himself to make the first move. He couldn’t jump into it like he had with Sam. He needed this to be as unlike what he’d had with Sam as it could be.

Whatever Abel thought or saw seemed to be enough. He relaxed and nodded back to where a large mattress took up half the trailer. “You want to come to bed?”

“Dude! I said I’d try, I didn’t say I was jumping your ass tonight.”

“Shut up, it’s late. I’m tired.”

Dean looked back at the Roadhouse where his single cot waited. It was safe. He could tell Abel he wasn’t ready for that and go back to that cot and dream of Sam. Or he could, not leap, but step tentatively toward something different. Something that, if he were really honest with himself, terrified him.

In the end, he shut the door behind him and turned the lock with a definitive click, leaving the Roadhouse empty for the night.

 

*****

 

With Sam, it had been leaps and bounds, and they’d taken their time about it, but there had never been a question that he was all in from the start, because, it was _Sam_. He couldn’t have explained it anymore than he could explained how with Abel, it was all by inches. Slow, excruciating inches. They spent weeks doing nothing more than sleeping next to each other in the trailer. Actually, it had started in the trailer, but on a particularly stagnant night, when not even the open windows could make the air circulate, he’d made Abel help him drag the full mattress into the office so it wouldn’t feel so much like sleeping in the Impala with Sam.

Just sleeping next to each other turned into Abel occasionally touching him in the bar when they were getting ready in the morning or cleaning up in the evening. Never when anyone else was around, though, and Dean might have suspected that was as much for himself as it was for Dean, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful.

Turned out he pretty much felt his sex life, what little there was of it, wasn’t anyone else’s damn business, even when there wasn’t incest involved.

It was mostly brushes of a hand against Dean’s shoulder, arm, the small of his back. There had been a time when Dean would have broken a man’s wrist for that, but that was a world away and he barely recognized himself the first time he caught Abel’s smaller hand in his and kissed the inside of his wrist, staring him in the eyes almost like it was a dare.

Abel grinned, “I’ve got something else you can kiss if you’re in the mood.”

So Dean had kissed him. On the lips. Not hard, not fast, not desperate like the first time he’d kissed Sam, but soft, just testing the waters to see if they felt okay. They did. They really kind of did.

 

*****

 

It took weeks for Dean to get on board with kissing on any regular kind of basis and Abel never instigated it. Not once. There were times Dean could tell he wanted to, but he didn’t and even if it was because Abel thought Dean was damaged from his childhood rather than Dean was still grieving over the loss of his brother and his lover and his fucking everything, it was just one more thing Dean was grateful for.

The bar filled up more regularly. More Hunters stopped by and Dean started using the maps like Ellen always had to track where Hunters were and taking calls for cases that needed working. Ten months in and it was all becoming so routine it was very nearly painful. Ellen and Jo and Ash and Sam were all missing and a lot of other faces, too, but there were new ones and new people.

It had been ten months since Sam threw himself in the pit and Dean was starting to feel a little like he was going to be okay. Not completely, but maybe a little. Maybe mostly. He hadn’t stopped thinking about hunting, but he was keeping his promise to Sam and since that was the only thing he could do for him now, to hell if he was going to fuck that up. He could sit at the Roadhouse and take calls and get people in touch with each other. He could hunt down a few of his own cases, too, as long as he handed them off. And he could lay on a mattress on the floor of the office, half on top of Abel, with his tongue curling around the other man’s and his free hand wrapped around a hip that was smaller, but becoming just as familiar.

Pulling back, he looked down at Abel’s flushed, breathless face and Abel expression of contentment wavered. “What?”

Dean shook his head and bent back down, this time, when Abel opened his mouth, Dean’s hand tightened for just a moment before moving up and around. Abel’s hand caught his and he pulled out of the kiss, looking dubiously at Dean like he was staring at a ticking time bomb. “Are you… I mean, we don’t have to… I could always just… you know, like usual.”

 _I could always go jerk off in the shower_. Like they both did, separately, after they were done fooling around. Except Dean didn’t want to do that this time. He wasn’t sure if he was really ready, but then it was hard to tell what ready was. He’d never done this before, not with anyone new.

“Shut up.”

Abel did and Dean did and it was just hands on new parts of their bodies, but it felt really good and if Dean felt a little guilty after, he also felt like that was okay. He’d probably always feel guilty on some level, which wasn’t so bad if he could also feel this good, too.

 

*****

 

Hands turned to mouths pretty quickly and for a short time after that, Abel watched him a little funny – like he was waiting for Dean to have some kind of meltdown over putting a cock in his mouth. Not that Dean hadn’t overthought it before, during, and after, but that was only because Dean was always either overthinking or underthinking something. At least, that was what Sam had always said.

“No, no, you remember that time you came home from a hunt, just before Sam left for Stanford and I was there?”

“Yeah.”

“When you pulled up in the Impala, we were in the weapon’s shed… making time.”

“Seriously?!”

“Oh, yeah, and I don’t know who lost their erection faster, but we had to stay in there for fifteen minutes while you emptied the car and got lectured by Ellen for not calling in.”

Dean remembered that lecture. He’d _earned_ that lecture; actually, he’d done it on purpose. He was pissed, because Sam had told him about Stanford and told him that Ellen had encouraged him, so Dean had stopped calling half way through the hunt. It hadn’t been one of his best ideas as far as revenge went - although, it hadn’t been his worst, either.

“Your turn.”

“When Sammy was little, like five, he decided to fix me breakfast.”

“When he was five? What was he making?”

“Pop-tarts. He set the microwave on fire.” Abel put a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter while Dean continued. “The fire alarm went off, the police showed up. We had to hide in a dumpster for twelve hours until Dad finally came back.”

Abel shuffled a little closer to Dean until their shoulder’s touched where they were lying on the mattress.

“He never could cook.”

“He learned.”

“Really?”

Dean nodded at the ceiling. “Yeah, that girl he dated, Jess, she taught him. He made the best pancakes.”

Abel turned to look at Dean’s face, but he didn’t look back, because he got a feeling he knew what was coming. “It’ll be a year tomorrow, right?”

They both knew that. They’d both been watching the calendar when the other wasn’t looking. “A whole year.”

There was a stifling silence for several minutes. A year. A whole fucking year without Sam. Nearly a whole year with Abel. Dean raked a hand through his hair. He couldn’t think about that, because it was too much too soon. It didn’t feel like a year.

“I called him Samantha for an entire month.”

“Why!?”

“When our dad came back, he kept wanting to talk about it. Every time we had five minutes to ourselves it was all, ‘Dean, you have to talk about it. It isn’t healthy to keep it all inside.’ So, I started calling him Samantha and he shut up.”

Abel sat up and looked down at Dean eyebrows raised. “All the time?”

“Even on hunts.”

They’d had a Chupacabra coming at them, practically half up their collective asses – his, Sam’s and John’s – and he’d been yelling, ‘Samantha, gun now!’ and Sam had yelled back, as he tossed Dean his gun, ‘Really, now?!’ and John had yelled, ‘Boys, focus!’ but he’d already got the bastard between the eyes with a bullet and left it stunned and open long enough for John to behead it, so they couldn’t really argue with his focus.

Lying back down, Abel stretched his arms over his head before going limp on the mattress. “You talk in your sleep sometimes.”

Dean sat up before he’d even realized he was moving and looked down at Abel with too large eyes and Abel just looked back, not saying anything more. Jesus Christ, he talked in his sleep? How long had he been doing that? Not before Sam’s death, or Sam would have told him, wouldn’t he? What had he said? What did Abel know? Did he know _that_?

“I have to… I have to go for a walk.”

Abel called after him, but he was already half out the door with his jacket on and he didn’t plan on stopping until he couldn’t see the Roadhouse and then he was going to walk some more and he wasn’t turning around until he thought he might have his head around about half of what that could have meant.

He’d had nightmares early on. For months, actually. He’d wake up bathed in sweat from watching Sam fall into the damn pit again, from seeing what could have happened to the world if Sam hadn’t beat the devil at his own game. Sam crushing Bobby’s head like a melon with those too strong hands he’d punched Dean into the windshield of the Impala with. Children butchered by something that wasn’t Sam anymore, but looked like him, talked like him sometimes, just to fuck with Dean’s head. Sam, trapped in his own head, begging silently for Dean to just kill him already and the worst part of that was, Dean was never quite sure whether the dream him was really trying to kill Sam or still trying to save him.

After a few months, four maybe, they’d started to die down and by the time Abel and him were sharing a bed, they were nothing more than a prick in the back of his head. He could deal with it. But maybe not. Maybe that was what Abel had been talking about. Maybe Dean was mumbling shit about the apocalypse and he hadn’t really talked to Abel about that much, either, not even after his breakdown over the sink.

Stopping down the road, he looked back where the Roadhouse was just out of sight. He had totally blown that. Completely and utterly blown it. He should have stayed and heard what Abel had to say. It could have been anything, really, because there were god knew how many things he hadn’t told him.

Did that count as overthinking or underthinking? He was pretty sure it was one of those. Kicking a tree, Dean started back, cursing under his breath as he went.

 

*****

 

Everything was dark and fuzzy and really, really confusing because he didn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew he was waking up.

What the hell had happened? Had he been hit by a car on his way back?

No, not a car. No, he’d been on his way back and he heard a scream, Abel’s he thought, but he couldn’t be sure and he’d run the rest of the way, but by the time he got there, Abel wasn’t in the office and he wasn’t in the back. The door to the trailer was open and there was blood. Not a lot, but enough, a couple of smeared handprints.

Then… he groaned and tried to sit up, blinking at the dim light in the room that was hanging over his head. Yellow eyes, fucking Yellow Eyes. It couldn’t possibly be, because he’d killed him, years ago, but he was there and he was laughing at Dean, brandishing a bloody knife and Dean was thinking about Abel and knowing that was his blood, but wondering if he was still alive, or if Yellow Eyes had taken him, too.

He couldn’t remember what happened after that. It felt like something had stabbed him in the stomach, but it couldn’t have, because he was waking up and he was… Dean looked around the room. In the office? He was on their mattress in the office and there was someone sitting in a chair in the doorway, which wasn’t far away, because there was barely room for the desk and mattress in the damn room, so he didn’t really understand why the person was so out of focus.

Blinking a few times, Dean licked his dry lips and then everything stopped. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he would have sworn his heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second, because _Sam_. Sam was sitting in the chair, casually playing the tip of the small, pure silver knife they kept hanging in the bar against his thumb and… _Sam_. Fucking _Sam_.

Or something that looked like Sam.

Dean’s insides froze. It was in actual physical pain and he gripped the sheets under him as an anchor while Sam stood up and held the knife up, palms toward Dean in a show of surrender.

“Calm down. Look.”

Sam dragged the knife over his skin, showing him a thin line of red blood, no hiss of pain, or supernatural sizzling as it broke the skin. Then he took a flask that Dean recognized as the holy water they usually kept under the bar and used the knife to pop open one of his salt bullets, pouring it into the water before swigging it. Human, not possessed, not a ghost.

Sam. Sam alive. Sam whole and remarkably unhurt and smiling at him expectantly and Dean rushed his brother, scrambling across the mattress until he had his arms around him, feeling the firm, broad muscles against his chest and under his hands.

“Jesus, Sam, what are you…? How?”

Sam shrugged, “Don’t know. Just am.”

Then his brother’s arms were around him, firm and locked in place like they always were when they were alone in a hotel room, but the tone of his voice was wrong. The emotion behind it was wrong. He’d been locked in Lucifer’s cage for the last year, so shouldn’t he be a little less… nonchalant about the whole thing? Shouldn’t he sound relieved, or not quite as sane as…

Sam’s hands grabbed his face and pulled Dean up into a hungry kiss and Dean forgot how to think. Okay, yeah, think later. Enjoy now.

Dean moved his hands from behind Sam to grab the front of his shirt, pulling Sam closer to him, down just a little so they were meeting in the middle, lips and teeth and tongue and it felt so good. It felt like the best fucking thing in the whole world, it felt…

“Sam?!”

Dean jumped back like a guilty teenager and closed his eyes for just a second, so he could prolong the moment he had to see the hurt confusion on Abel’s face. Except when he did look, Abel’s face was more hurt and surprised than confused.

“What are you doing here? We thought you were dead!”

Not, ‘why are you kissing Dean.’

Sam shrugged again, the same response he’d had for Dean, only it came with a little more in the way of words. “I got attacked by a Djinn a few days ago. We figured it would go after Dean next so… well, it was better coming from me than someone else.”

There was so much about that Dean needed answers to. Djinn attacked him, we, someone else. None of it made a whole lot of sense, but it was hard to think with the feel of Sam’s lips and teeth and tongue all over and inside his mouth and Abel standing there and Dean might actually be sick just from the confliction roiling around inside him.

A whole year. It took a whole fucking year and like some higher power was waiting for Dean to drop his guard and become uncomfortably numb about the idea of never being with Sam again, here he was, looking for all the world like he’d never been gone.

Actually, Sam looked entirely too comfortable with the situation, but Dean couldn’t blame him, because he was pretty sure Sam didn’t know about him and Abel. Although, Abel was a Hunter, a childhood friend, and Sam’s ex-boyfriend, so not knowing that he was Dean’s current boyfriend, shouldn’t really matter seeing as he was just caught kissing his brother.

Dean’s head hurt trying to run through it, so he decided to stick to something he could handle. Sam was back, they had to figure out why. “Abel, can I get a few minutes with Sam?”

He just couldn’t think with both of them there, but the hurt redoubled on Abel’s face before he murmured, “Sure,” and turned to leave and Dean cursed himself.

“Sam, I’ll be right back.”

Sam didn’t look even remotely concerned, just nodded as Dean pushed past him, rushing to catch up with Abel, who was already outside, making his way to the trailer. Dean noted the door was closed and the blood wasn’t there, but he’d have to deal with that later.

“Abel, just wait a second.”

“No!” Abel stopped, turning around to look at Dean and there was resignation there. “Look, you don’t have to explain.”

“Yeah, I do.” He had to explain that this wasn’t something he’d planned. Like he could have planned it when they’d both thought Sam was dead.

“No, you don’t. Dean…” Abel ducked his head, flinching, “There are only so many times you can wake up to your boyfriend groping you in his sleep, moaning his brother’s name before you kinda figure it out.”

Dean didn’t really know what to say that. There wasn’t anything, really.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. That I knew, that I wasn’t… in case you needed to talk, or something. You don’t talk much.”

“You don’t, either.” At least he hadn’t been over thinking it. In fact, for once in his life, he’d actually hit the nail on the fucking head, not that it made him feel any better.

“Right.” Abel nodded to himself. “Look, I was really freaked out when I first realized what was going on, okay? Like, _really_ freaked out. You’d had a thing with Jo, who was your kind-of sister and then a thing with Sam, who was your actual brother, but it wasn’t an incest thing, because you were definitely into me and I’m nowhere near being related to you in any way. So, I let it go, because Sam was dead and because…”

Abel had to take a deep breath before continuing and Dean considering taking the pause to get something in himself, but he couldn’t make his throat work.

“Because I really, really liked you.”

“I like you to.”

“Not like you like him. Not like you _love_ him. I’m not stupid, Dean. Desperate and lonely sometimes, maybe, but not stupid. If I ask you to choose between us, I know who wins that and it’s not me.” Dean couldn’t even argue with that. He couldn’t even begin to put into words how right Abel was. Knowing Sam was alive? It felt like that empty part of him that had been sucked into that hole with Sam was back and he could really breathe for the first time in a year.

He settled with, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

“Of course you didn’t know. If I thought you did, I’d kick your ass.”

Abel’s rueful smile said that maybe he should have laughed there, but Dean couldn’t quite manage. He hadn’t done the break up thing in a long time. In fact, the last time was with Jo and that had pretty much been a disaster and Sam… Sam had only left him in death. This was new and uncomfortable and it didn’t help that he really wanted to get back inside to Sam and start asking the important questions.

Abel’s shoulders sagged, “Just go. I’m not leaving. I’m just gonna sleep in the trailer tonight and we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Slowly, Dean nodded, but didn’t move until the door to the trailer had closed on him and even then, he felt like he should go to him and explain. He should at least try, but the backdoor to the Roadhouse opened with a creak behind him and Sam was standing there, leaning against the framework with his arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows raised curiously and his shaggy mess of hair framing his face in the dark and Dean felt something he’d been trying desperately to feel for a year. Under Sam’s watchful, half amused gaze, Dean was finally home.


End file.
